It departs from the question asked in the post a bit, but I would like to weigh in on the side of rhetoric. Richard Feynman is a good candidate for the most popular physicist of the postwar era, and I think you will agree that the driving force behind his popularity is not the Nobel Prize he won; rather he is called the Great Explainer and the public knows him most through his skill at communicating. This was how I learned about him, and this video is his most memorable moment for me. Consider also the anecdote about Shannon and Von Neumann concerning entropy:
Von Neumann told me, ‘You should call it entropy, for two reasons. In the first place you uncertainty function has been used in statistical mechanics under that name. In the second place, and more importantly, no one knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage.’
Can anyone think of any examples where the course of science was directed as much by the debater’s skill as by the technical merits?
I put it to all of you that we are dealing with challenging subjects, often removed from people’s everyday experience, but which are of critical importance to them nevertheless. Expository work in math and science is effectively technical rhetoric; we should seriously consider what the motivation is for arbitrarily stopping efforts at clear communication when we come to the spoken word.
Also, two points of interest:
Point of interest 1: while it was a standard part of liberal arts educations for centuries, it is not a standard part of them now in the United States. For some intuition as to why, I offer an article from Harvard Magazine called How Harvard Destroyed Rhetoric.
Point of interest 2: it may not be standard, but it is on the rise. In the engineering program where I went to school, Public Speaking was a curriculum requirement. The reason is that engineers will be expected to give presentations throughout their career, the majority of which will not be to technical peers—the ability to speak clearly and in a manner that inspires confidence in technical conclusions is expected to be key to success.
P.S. I had in mind using a transcript of a talk given by an older mathematician, wherein he described lessons from his career, including not spending enough time on exposition and killing his field as a result. He ends with some comment on learning to enjoy being a mathematical institution. I initially thought it might be Richard Hamming’s ‘You and Your Research’, but that is not correct and it is maddening to me that I cannot find it. Can anyone help?
That’s the one! Downloaded, bookmarked, emailed to myself—it will not escape me again.
For the interested, in the above link I intended to reference Part 6, specifically where he talks about his experience with foliations. This is page 13.
It departs from the question asked in the post a bit, but I would like to weigh in on the side of rhetoric. Richard Feynman is a good candidate for the most popular physicist of the postwar era, and I think you will agree that the driving force behind his popularity is not the Nobel Prize he won; rather he is called the Great Explainer and the public knows him most through his skill at communicating. This was how I learned about him, and this video is his most memorable moment for me. Consider also the anecdote about Shannon and Von Neumann concerning entropy:
Can anyone think of any examples where the course of science was directed as much by the debater’s skill as by the technical merits?
I put it to all of you that we are dealing with challenging subjects, often removed from people’s everyday experience, but which are of critical importance to them nevertheless. Expository work in math and science is effectively technical rhetoric; we should seriously consider what the motivation is for arbitrarily stopping efforts at clear communication when we come to the spoken word.
Also, two points of interest:
Point of interest 1: while it was a standard part of liberal arts educations for centuries, it is not a standard part of them now in the United States. For some intuition as to why, I offer an article from Harvard Magazine called How Harvard Destroyed Rhetoric.
Point of interest 2: it may not be standard, but it is on the rise. In the engineering program where I went to school, Public Speaking was a curriculum requirement. The reason is that engineers will be expected to give presentations throughout their career, the majority of which will not be to technical peers—the ability to speak clearly and in a manner that inspires confidence in technical conclusions is expected to be key to success.
P.S. I had in mind using a transcript of a talk given by an older mathematician, wherein he described lessons from his career, including not spending enough time on exposition and killing his field as a result. He ends with some comment on learning to enjoy being a mathematical institution. I initially thought it might be Richard Hamming’s ‘You and Your Research’, but that is not correct and it is maddening to me that I cannot find it. Can anyone help?
I think you’re looking for Thurston’s “On proof and progress in mathematics”: https://arxiv.org/abs/math/9404236
That’s the one! Downloaded, bookmarked, emailed to myself—it will not escape me again.
For the interested, in the above link I intended to reference Part 6, specifically where he talks about his experience with foliations. This is page 13.
Thank you, query!